The statue was dedicated on August 8, 1908, according to the State of Arkansas' application to put the statue on the National Register of Historic Places. The city held a parade of carriages and marching veterans, as well as a float carrying 14 girls – one for each of the states that seceded from the United States in the Civil War. At least one of the speakers praised the Confederacy, claiming Arkansas had “a perfect and constitutional right to secede."

Courtesy of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System

James Henderson Berry, c. 1884

The United Daughters of the Confederacy sponsored the monument. Most of the cost of the memorial was donated by Sen. James Henderson Berry, a former governor of Arkansas who had fought for the Confederacy in the nearby Battle of Pea Ridge, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

Some visitors to the Bentonville Square have mistakenly assumed the statue on top of the granite memorial depicts or represents James Henderson Berry. In fact, the statue is of a generic bearded soldier. Six years after the statue was dedicated, the United Daughters of the Confederacy added a plaque to the memorial. An inscription honored Sen. Berry, who had since died.

Courtesy Valis55 CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Smith Confederate Monument at the Sebastian County Courthouse

The Bentonville Confederate Monument was one of 12 Confederate memorials erected by the Arkansas United Daughters of the Confederacy between 1899 and 1915. The monuments were being mass-produced across the country at this time; Bentonville’s was manufactured in Barre, Vermont, according to the book Bentonville by Monte Harris.

When Arkansas submitted the Bentonville Confederate Monument to the National Register of Historic places, it cited a brief history by Charles Russell Logan as proof of the statue's historic importance. That history also gives context to the statue's installation.

According to Logan's history, the push to memorialize Confederate soldiers in public places came after Reconstruction ended, and “Redeemer Democrats” solidified power in Arkansas and other Southern states. In 1891, the Democrat-controlled House voted to remove a portrait of George Washington from the speaker’s rostrum and replace it with a portrait of Jefferson Davis. This same Congress enacted Arkansas’ first Jim Crow laws.

The state congress erected a Confederate Soldiers Monument at the Capitol in Little Rock in 1905, but a bill to create a monument to Union soldiers failed in 1911.

Adam Roberts

Monument at the Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville

In the first decades after the Civil War, most memorials to Confederate soldiers in Arkansas were located in cemeteries. Beginning in the 1880s, both the Sons of Confederate Veterans and related women’s groups had heated debates about whether that practice should continue, or whether new monuments should be built on public land. Proponents of continuing to build monuments in cemeteries argued that the location would set a somber tone to honor the Confederate dead, and would avoid celebrating the side that lost. Those who wanted to build monuments in public squares argued that few people would see the memorials if they were installed only in secluded cemeteries.

The first chapter of the Arkansas United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded in Pine Bluff in 1896. Over the next few decades, it installed monuments, lobbied state lawmakers, approved textbooks and sponsored initiatives to honor the aging Confederate veterans, and champion the “Lost Cause” perspective of the Civil War. The “Lost Cause” portrayed Confederates as noble soldiers fighting to defend their homelands. The "Lost Cause" history largely downplayed the role of slavery in the Civil War, and defended 20th Century Jim Crow laws. The minutes of the 1915 Arkansas Division of the United Daughter of the Confederacy’s state convention include an explanation of the “Necessity of the Ku Klux Klan," according to Logan's history.

40/29 has made repeated attempts to obtain comment from the United Daughters of the Confederacy and to contact members in Arkansas. Those attempts have been unsuccessful.

The national United Daughters of the Confederacy website currently contains a proclamation that states the group “will not associate with any individual, group or organization identified as being militant, unpatriotic, racist or subversive to the United States of America and its flag.”

By 1996, Bentonville’s chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy had disbanded. A document from that year states that Benton County had taken control of the park the Confederate Monument was on, and that it would now allow the City of Bentonville to take over the care and maintenance of the square.